Hamidreza Mahboobi Arani

Aristotle presents his doctrine of prime matter in order to give an explanation for change and especially for generation and corruption. Hence, no surprise, the place to look for the origin of this doctrine is nowhere but Aristotle’s science of nature. The first three sections of this article examine the Aristotle’s explanation of this doctrine according to his teachings in the works concerning the science of nature and show that why Aristotle introduces such a thing as prime matter into his science of nature and what he does mean by that. Then, in the last section, I will show that Aristotle’s explanation of prime matter as the ultimate substratum of all things, at least as far as these works are concerned, is not plausible and without difficulties.

The question of “what is happiness?” is among the most important questions of Greek philosophy. In those early works of Plato that very likely represent the views of Socrates, Socrates mainly focuses on moral issues and tries to get close to an explanation of the nature of virtue, the happy life and the relation between virtue and the realization of happiness. Given the Principle of Eudemonism, in this paper it is tried to examine Socrates’ views on the relation between virtue and happiness and defend what is known as the “Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue”.